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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26285398">give me back my life</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/LR00/pseuds/LR00'>LR00</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Gryffindor, Hogwarts, Loneliness, Mental Health Issues, Tom Riddle's Diary, it doesn't follow canon really well?</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 07:22:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,567</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26285398</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/LR00/pseuds/LR00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>no matter how hard she tries, she still misses Tom, still misses the sixth year boy who had heard her rambles, her secrets, her fears, who had seen her soul and befriended her anyway</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Tom Riddle &amp; Ginny Weasley</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>give me back my life</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Basically, I call bullshit on the fact that Ginny just recovers from the whole diary thing with no effects. I may have also ignored a significant portion of what happened in the books, so do be warned (and don’t read it if you don’t like it).</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She walks into her second year at Hogwarts similar to how she did her first, nervous, scared and a million things not Gryffindor. And alone. (She isn’t physically alone, sure, but there is more than one way to be alone). She did not have friends as she walked behind Hagrid alongside her schoolmates the first year, but she wasn’t alone either. Not all had friends when they followed the half-giant, eyes trying to take in the beauty of everything they’ve only heard of, never seen, the place where they would be spending the next seven years of their life.</p><p>
  <em> (and there was Tom, Tom who told her secrets in return for her words, her company, Tom who actually listened to her, Tom who told her he would be her friend.) </em>
</p><p>She walks to a carriage filled with strangers (they spent a year together, slept in the same dorm, <em> so what </em> ) with her head held high and does not falter as she walks into Hogwarts. <em> (she must not stumble, she cannot break, she is a Weasley and a </em> <b> <em>Gryffindor</em> </b> <em> )  </em></p><p>Somehow, despite everything that happened in this very school, she still feels a warmth, a comfort. Her stomach is clenched tight with nerves and a tension that would never, <em> ever </em> , show on her face, and she knows that she is in for a year full of memories and tears, but it is still better than the Burrow. Better than her <em> home </em> , better than her <em> family </em>. She loved them so much, but all she wanted was to be far away from them, floating high in a world that could never reach her.</p><p><em> (she smiles when her parents tell her they are going to egypt to see bill, smiles when they tell her there isn’t enough money to get her new textbooks, surely she could make do with her brothers’ old ones, smiles when they expect her to break, to be fragile, and then to be their happy, carefree girl, to be </em> <b> <em>fine</em> </b> <em> . she isn’t. no matter how hard she tries, she still misses Tom, still misses the sixth year boy who had heard her rambles, her secrets, her fears, who had seen her </em> <b> <em>soul</em> </b> <em> and befriended her anyway) </em></p><p>She sits in the Great Hall, surrounded by the chatter of the other Gryffindors. She sits through the Sorting the same way she sits through her family dinners, letting all the sound flow around her without ever registering in her mind. She claps when she’s meant to, responds when she is supposed to, and thinks of the year before, sitting at the same table, terrified out of her mind and still smiling. </p><p>
  <em> (she was the gryffindor weasley girl, the one with 6 older brothers, brothers who gryffindor loved when they weren’t hating them. she was meant to be strong, brave, vicious) </em>
</p><p>Her Sorting had been like most others. She sat down, and the Hat went on her head. It had mentioned all the houses <em> (she could be gryffindor, slytherin, hufflepuff, ravenclaw, she could be what she chose to be) </em> and in the end, <em> she </em> was the one to choose Gryffindor. </p><p>
  <em> (after all, the hat does not choose. it offers them all the houses, tells them what they are, what they could be. the wizard chooses, and believes that the hat chose for them) </em>
</p><p>She breaks out of that daze when the Headmaster mentions Dementors at Hogwarts. <em>Dementors</em>. They were meant to guard <em>Azkaban</em>, the <em>prison</em>. They were meant for the worst of the world. And now they were at Hogwarts. She very carefully does not think of what it would mean for her, what it would mean to have these <em>monsters</em> that made her relive her worst memories all around her. She does not wonder at the world that expected her to get better while reminding her of every bad thing, every single failure.</p><p>She claps enthusiastically for Professor Lupin. He was capable of driving away the Dementors, he clearly knew his subject, he was an actually competent teacher unlike Lockhart, he knew how to drive away the Dementors. <em> (maybe this year, the saviours would not be 12 year olds in a school filled with those so much older, filled with teachers, </em> <b> <em>adults</em> </b> <em> who were meant to protect the children)  </em></p><p>When the table bursts into enthusiastic applause for Hagrid, she <em> doesn’t </em> . She watches Ron and his friends celebrate, listens to the overwhelming applause. It’s not that she dislikes Hagrid. Hagrid was well-liked by Charlie <em> and </em> the twins, not to mention Ron. What she did doubt was his ability to teach, his qualifications. <em> (she remembers Tom telling her about the third year student who was found responsible for the killings all those  years ago and expelled. she tries to push it away. she knows now that he was framed, that Tom was not telling the full truth, but that knowledge did not change the fact that he lacked a proper education) </em> She was sick of incompetent teachers, teachers who bullied or ignored their students, sick of adults who failed at something 12 year olds succeeded in doing. </p><p><em> (she knows logically that there was nothing they could have done, doesn’t want to be bitter, but she knows that it was her brother and Harry Potter who had gone looking for her, it was </em> <b> <em>Harry Potter</em> </b> <em> who had saved her while the adults sat and mourned) </em></p><p>She drifts through the year the same way she drifted through the summer. Sirius Black is someone many people talk about, the Dementors considered acceptable in the face of the danger he could pose. She never understands that, not really. Sirius Black was obviously near Hogwarts. He had entered Hogwarts multiple times. He had even been in her brother’s dorm. No one had been harmed yet, the slashed portrait the most damage done. Despite that, there were people who believed the Dementors with all the memories and horrors they brought were <em> better </em>.</p><p>
  <em> (sometimes she sits somewhere high up and stares at the world so far below and wonders what she could have been like. she imagines being a 12 year old with friends to spend her free time with, imagines laughing at jokes and groaning over homework with a whole group of people. she imagines being a 12 year old whose worst memory was something so much more innocent, light enough to believe that the Dementors were acceptable. she dreams of the child she could have been, and tries to cast it away and move on. she never succeeds, just like she never manages to forget Tom.) </em>
</p><p>Slowly, she manages to make friends. Colin Creevey is not popular among the other Gryffindor second years and she could see why. Even she had noticed him taking pictures of everyone (most notably Harry Potter) through the smoke and tears and anxiety attacks. He is still a good friend and fun to be around. He had been friendly to her even the year before, when she hadn’t cared about anything but Tom and Harry Potter and trying to make sense of everything. Luna is a Ravenclaw, and they probably wouldn’t have been more than acquaintances if they had other friends. Luna is a strange girl though, as free and unaffected by the world as Ginny dreams of being. She is an outcast in Ravenclaw, just like Ginny was slowly left behind the rest of Gryffindor. </p><p>She knows most people expected her to be popular. Bill, Charlie, Fred and George were all popular. Ron was best friends with Harry Potter. Maybe if she had never received the diary, maybe she would have been popular. Ron would never have wanted her hanging around his friends, but he did not socialise much. She could have been one of the Wealseys, proudly Gryffindor. </p><p>Sometimes she would wish she never did find that diary, that she had never called Tom her friend. She wishes that she could just relax, that she could just laugh and run and fly like everyone else. She would be able to actually hold a conversation with her family, be chatty and lively as 10 year old Ginny was, just as they wanted her to be. </p><p>Luna and Colin would find her trying to breathe and sit by her, ignoring the stares of students passing by. At first she did not want their concern, their pity, she could not deal with their kindness. She couldn’t discard the possibility that it was all a lie, they were just using her. Colin was unbelievably irritating and Luna extremely odd, and that helped. <em> (tom had been perfect after all. Perfect, handsome, and popular. Slytherin.) </em> She knows that she would probably have never been friends with them if she hadn’t been left behind too, if she hadn’t been one of them. <em> (She imagines being one of the Gryffindor girls. She knows she will never be one of them, not in this world, and she teaches herself to stop wanting it so bad.) </em></p><p>Eventually, she would join the Quidditch team, first as replacement Seeker and then as a Chaser. She would never really try to fit into Gryffindor, never really try to be one of the girls in her year. She flies higher and higher, trying to fulfill her own wishes and dreams. She watches how <em> her </em> world flies up with her, how it tries to stay with her. tom does not vanish from her life, from her mind, but she flies higher and lets him fall behind.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The ending was terrible, I know. I don't want to end up spending days trying to fix it though so here we are.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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